Spontaneous expression of thoughts and emotions in words.

The other side of the New Year

The eve of New Year is a time to wish for an occasion that heralds peace, harmony, loads of happiness and success. Friends and families make it a point to get together, to celebrate the occasion and welcome the New Year with hopes and aspirations. People put up parties to mark the New Year in every nook and corner of the country. In a place like Thimphu there is no dearth of such places. We have discotheques every here and there. People don’t care who comes in and goes. That is why we hear of a 17 year old boy who got stabbed in his eyes because of which he now lost his eye sight. Is that a way to welcomes one’s New Year. We all know that it is time for celebration but is it right to let youngsters get drunk and hit each other.

There are many people responsible here. The youth may not have realized his actions until he found himself in the hospital with the lost eye sight. The ones who hit him may not have realized that evening when they were under the influence of alcohol or whatever substance they abused. I have a queer feeling that they must be repenting now but they find that they have now no ways to redeem their actions.

But the parents should have known better to have let their children out at odd hour. The bar owners or the discotheque operators should have known that underage children have no entry into their area. There are many others who are responsible but now what is the point of repenting when everything is done.

The sight at the express way is a sore to the eye. Broken railings and electric poles at every few distance, splinters of glasses on the road, broken culverts, remains of the vehicles and so on. In just one evening a lot of damages have been done. The road to Kuenselphodrang and Sangaygang popularly known as Buddha point and BBS point respectively is polluted with empty cans, broken beer bottles, wrappers and plastics.

Where has the civic sense disappeared? How do we inculcate the civic sense of driving, the civic sense of keeping your own trash, the civic sense of preserving the facilities given to us, and the most of all the civic sense of empathy and compassion to oneself and to others? As parents, how do we ensure that our children are not in the wrong company and that they are not into undesirable actions? Where do we draw the lines of when do they party and at what age?

If things are not going right with children isn’t it time to do some reflection of where we have gone wrong in our ways of up-bringing them? Let’s do our part well so that there is no room for regret. At the end of the day we all should remember that children are the greatest asset to us and most importantly youth of today should be brought up as the leaders of tomorrow not as the destructor to oneself and burden to the family and country.